On Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 01:34:01PM +0530, AlgoMantra wrote: > I'm a newbie to audio in linux. I can code in C, and I know that > if you $cat /dev/dsp you can see your microphone feeding weird > shit into this sound device.
/dev/dsp and /dev/audio are OSS devices and almost never used in Linux Audio. They exist mainly for compatibility with old software. > I've also read that this device is encoded as 8-bit unsigned, This will almost never be true. 15 years ago yes, but not today. 1. If you want to experiment with audio software you'd use either ALSA devices or JACK. ALSA replaces the old /dev/dsp and /dev/audio devices, but with a completely different interface. Using ALSA devices directly can be hard for a beginner since you need to take care of everything. JACK works on top of ALSA (in most cases) and hides a lot of the gory details. All audio signals become floating point no matter what your hardware uses. JACK can also connect audio programs to each other and not only to the sound card. If you want to experiment with writing audio code: 1. Find out about JACK. Google 'Jack Audio Connection Kit'. 2. Learn what it does and how. 3. Examine the example code that comes with it. 4. Start coding your own. It's easier to use than any other interface. If you just want to experiment with sine waves and additive synthesis you don't have to write andy code. There are many programs that allow you to do this sort of thing directly: CSound, SuperCollider, PureData, ..., and also a number of software synthesisers like e.g. AMS. Ciao, -- FA Laboratorio di Acustica ed Elettroacustica Parma, Italia Lascia la spina, cogli la rosa. _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.linuxaudio.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-audio-dev
